An excerpt:
I find “The End is the Beginning” to be a particularly apropos title, because truly, the end of this episode feels like it should’ve been the end of the first episode. The leisurely storytelling model of modern television instead has it at the end of the third, but it’s not like it’s a surprise that Picard’s going to wind up in charge of a ship, so why wait so long to get there?
Part of the reason is that there’s yet still more exposition to provide, and this time a lot of it relates to the Romulans and the Borg.